“... only walk-on roles in the Cabinet, while younger recruits to Benn’s Campaign Group, such as Paul Boateng and Dawn Primarolo, have not been allowed to speak in their own voices by Gordon Brown. No one has been more aware of the collapse of the Bennite agenda than Benn himself. His volume of diaries from the 1980s – The End of an Era ...”

“... perished in the nearby concentration camp. In Pretoria Haggard called in at the cemetery where Oom Paul (Kruger) was buried, along with ‘others I had known’. The diary does not identify these others, but Coan does, and provides a photograph of the memorial to a law officer’s wife by whom Haggard had a short-lived child, Ethel Rider, buried alongside. The ...”

“... of German Romanticism and 17th-century painting, a reimaginer of such figures as Anthony Blunt and Paul de Man, and a frequent raider of mathematics and cosmology, Banville is – no question – one of the fancy boys, sometimes verging on being a clever-clever darling. (‘As one of your most darkly glowing luminants has observed’ is the way the narrator of ...”

“... member of this last group, my sister announced to the committee that its writer had borrowed, via Paul Virilio, a passage from Gaston Bachelard in which a water-bound creature is described as a ‘principle of vertigo’, dying at every instant as it sheds its substance. Melissa argued that the surfer’s symbolic relation to the shark confirmed Virilio’s ...”

“... the pictures. The New York Times was among them, with one on the front page (but discreetly, in a corner, taking second place to the front and centre shot of the Queen Mary 2 arriving in New York harbour), and one inside. But before the Defense Department released its photos, the Seattle Times had published a photograph taken by two Maytag employees loading ...”

“... he thought would have this broad knowledge, and went on:I will give a copy of the manuscript to Paul Malliavin as editor of the Journal of Functional Analysis. But there is no certainty that he will consider the paper for publication over the next few months. Each of them will certainly say that it contains material relevant to his special interests. They ...”

“... across Ken Tynan on Fleet Street, hurrying towards the Evening Standard offices, then around the corner in Shoe Lane. I tagged along as he explained, between puffs, that there had been an unfortunate misprint in a piece he had written about Orson Welles. Luckily, he had spotted this in the first edition and now was on his way to ensure it was corrected for ...”

“... attendant pavement cafés had any idea where to find the conceptual art gallery around the next corner. The whole intimidating riverside development felt like a set of dubious quotations trying to live up to the catalogue. Has anybody actually swum in that Sky Pool of unnaturally shimmering water spanning the twin towers? Even residents such as Nadeem ...”

“... Lewis had an affair, came to the conclusion that ‘on the whole, he was half a SHIT,’ while Paul Nash told Lewis that his character was ‘strangely sub-human’. His bellicosity towards those reckless enough to be generous towards him was even fiercer: when a cheque from his patron Fanny Wadsworth didn’t turn up promptly, she received a postcard that ...”

“... a good example of where ‘environmental sensitivity reinforces national advantage.’ The fourth corner of the diamond is the position of related industries. One industry produces demand for others. A cluster of related industries makes for a stronger base than one that exists in isolation. Japan’s strength in semiconductors helps it in computers. Swedish ...”

“... or ‘beautiful new hat’ would win his interest. But it was mainly her literary friendship with Paul Bourget, and her beginnings as an author, with The Greater Inclination (1899) and The Valley of Decision (1902), that achieved this aim. ‘The explanation, of course, was that in that interval I had found myself’: Edith Wharton’s first ...”

“... their politics militant. I claim this to be the first piece about the salience of Scargill, though Paul Routledge of the Times had, it turned out, done a decent report on the election results as they occurred. In a few months such claims were moot. Scargill led a mass picket of miners to the Saltley coke depot outside Birmingham, recruited the support of the ...”

“... and desolation in the countryside and a swelling mountain of festering litter at every street corner. They saw the end, even for the most renewable resources. One of these was Robert Lamb, who in 1979 published a book called World without Tree. ‘A survey of current evidence,’ he wrote, ‘shows that trees could be so scarce in a mere thirty ...”

“... of the trip, in letters which contained gothic descriptions of his hand-to-mouth existence. To Paul Semonin, probably his closest friend, he wrote of an eight-day river journey through Colombia: The crew is primitive and vicious-looking and the captain is an old river toad who can’t understand why I’m here and doesn’t much care for it. His daughter ...”

“... and I was pulling pints for everyone, loving being the centre of attention. George sat in the corner observing it all. I was putting brandy in my Guinness which was the only way I drank spirits really. It says much for Adams’s resolve and basic physical strength that he was able to play so often so successfully. But it is still surprising, given that ...”